


Open

by alittlebitaces (acesmcgee)



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Bering and Wells, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Missing Scene, Season 4 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-31
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 03:24:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/473976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acesmcgee/pseuds/alittlebitaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a la Regina Spektor song, because what doesn't remind me of Bering and Wells nowadays. I just feel "potentially lovely; perpetually human" rightly sums up their relationship. anyway: a hypothesized missing scene where Myka gives her back her locket.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It's late when they get back to the bed and breakfast, and everyone, even Pete, is dragging.

Myka feels it too, the thick drowsiness blanketing her and weighing her down, making every step feel like a nearly insurmountable challenge, her own personal Everest, but even that can't drown out the underlying tension buried deep in her gut. Her partner may be the one who gets vibes, but even she can tell something is _off_.

Looking at Helena makes that feeling churn, but it remains indistinguishable, a strange and unsettling shadow on the periphery that she can't quite look at directly, much like how she regards the inventor herself. Not to say Myka isn't glad Helena walks beside her through the front door--her heart is buoyed, even through the exhaustion at running on empty for three days straight--but with her return comes a whole fresh host of hurdles. Ones that are decidedly closer to home. 

Ones that are becoming increasingly difficult to turn a blind eye to, especially now that Helena is _back_.

She steals a furtive glance at the other woman and quells the urge to reach out and touch her as they climb the stairs. Just to be sure.

(Just to know what the fabric of her clothing feels like, to see if it's as soft as her skin, to see if the time traveller would shy from the touch or welcome it, just to see if she could--)

Myka is drawn back to the present by an insistent jabbing at her hip, rhythmic with her ascent. 

The locket.

It took her a minute to place the discomfort; she had almost forgotten. 

Rummaging through a rather meticulously sorted drawer, it doesn't take her long to pull a sleep shirt for Helena: an old hockey jersey from one of the local teams that used to practice at the same rink she frequented back in Colorado when she was younger.

"I'm sorry," the agent says with a sheepish half smile as she hands Helena the oversized shirt. "I don't really have anything you'd be used to."

The smaller woman accepts it with a sly smile of her own, her black eyes glittering. "Quite alright, darling. I don't suppose anyone hoped I would be in need of such accommodation for quite some time."

_I did._

"Oh, that reminds me." Digging into her pocket as nonchalantly as possible, Myka pulls the heirloom from the confines of her jeans, the fine metal chain trailing down from her hand. Both women give pause, and the air in her bedroom seems to become irrevocably thicker.

And then Helena breathes, "My locket."

The agent shifts uncomfortably and proffers the jewelry, an indescribable nagging causing her to feel as though she hasn't the right to possess it any longer. "I picked it up outside the Regent sanctum in Hong Kong, I--well, I didn't think--I mean, I thought--"

She falters as the pads of Helena's fingertips brush against her palm in retrieving it. It's fleeting and innocent and the first time in over a year they've been able to touch one another; the realization hits hard, a flood of relief crashing over her like she released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. At once her inner voice is chastising her for being so silly, for always letting this woman fluster her so easily, but that dies quickly along with the words of whatever jumbled thought was on her tongue as she watches the inventor turn it over between slender fingers. For what seems like a long while, Myka simply _watches_.

At last that strong jaw lifts and straight black locks fall back from her face to reveal a tremulous smile. "Thank you for keeping this safe for me, Myka."

Much to her embarrassment, the prickling heat of a blush begins to creep across her cheeks. Green eyes flick down, averting, but she can't stop the gentle curl of her lips. It fades however, to be replaced by the slight, confused frown that overtakes her features once she realizes Helena is trying to give it back and Myka's searching her face for an explanation.

"But I--you--" she stammers, and though Helena's smile grows with her befuddlement, the expression is not unkind. In fact, the inventor practically glows.

"Thank you," she repeats in earnest, but all the same she's shaking her head as she continues: "but truly, I...I've no need of it any longer. I will always remember my daughter, my Christina--" and now those black eyes fall again to the locket, gazing upon it in equal measures forlorn and fond before lifting back to match brilliant green--"but if anything, I have learned it does one no favours to dwell in the past."

Helena hesitates, and Myka's chest aches with the uncharacteristically shy tone to the inventor's voice, "Not when I've a future." Spoken carefully, it's as though she's sussing the weight of every word--an experiment, something she's used to.

The agent wants to do a thousand things then, all at once so that she actually ends up merely standing there, close but not close enough, the inner conflict rising to a head too late; the moment passes and Helena gives a short, dry laugh. 

"Besides, not to be too terribly presumptuous, but you may wish to keep it as something of a reminder of me."

To someone who did not know her so well, it would have sounded a perfectly offhand, unconcerned remark, but Myka could hear the latent fear of uncertain fate edging into her voice.

And then the taller woman positively _bristles_ , to the point where Helena, startled, lets her expression slip. 

"I will _not_  let them take you again. If you think I won't fight for you, if _they_  think they can just _take_  you from--from me _again_ \--"

With great and, she suspects visible, effort, Myka curtails herself though the imagined indignancy still rattles her, makes her hands shake, makes her feel like the ground is trying to pull away and crumble when she's only just found her footing. And takes a deep breath. And starts again, somewhat more calmly but with no less conviction.

"Without you, we never would have been able to stop Sykes. Without you, I'd probably still be stuck in Hong Kong, or d--I mean, surely they can see that we wouldn't have stood a chance without you."

_I believed in you and I was right. That has to be worth something._

This time the agent doesn't turn away, and so she sees how Helena studies her, so carefully and full of adoration and vaguely baffled amusement that the woman before her possesses such a righteous anger, and for _her_. And maybe a hint of surprise is there, too, because for once Myka wore her heart on her sleeve, and maybe it was an accident but it doesn't feel like a mistake.

Even still, something of a sad smile tugs at the time traveller's lips. Helena steps forward, closer, almost how they used to be, and Myka tries to hide how that last breath was a bit clipped by the many possibilities that ran through her head in an instant. 

The mistake, it dawns on her and shrinks the space between them that much more, is that she didn't do it sooner. 

Metal warmed by body heat--the welcome signature of flesh solidified and living and _real_ \--is pressed into the taller woman's palm, the edges digging in a bit as Helena traps it there between their hands by threading her fingers with Myka's. 

"Please," she says, her voice barely a whisper now, and Myka's gaze drifts down to watch those lips form those words. "I would feel better if you kept it. Just in case. I..." Helena trails off, as if giving voice to the nightmare might make it come true.

_It_ has _to be worth something._

She wets her lips to bide a moment more, or perhaps for another reason entirely because they remain parted long before she musters speech again.

"I know what it's like to be forgotten, to have no one, to know every thread tethering you to the world has been severed. If at all possible, I would like to refrain from knowing such an existence even more intimately."

A fresh ache stabs into her like the point of a knife digging under her ribs, sharpened by the sight of the other woman so frayed at the edges. Another riot of thoughts tangles in Myka's mind and, for several aching seconds, once again binds her in silence.

_I could never forget you, Helena. You'll never be alone again. I wanted to forget you, once, when I thought it would be easier, but I was wrong, I can see that now--the only thing that was hard about any of this, of us, was trying to pretend you were less to me than you are and I'm done pretending so please, please, can we be everything I think we always wanted to be?_

In that ill-disguised moment of desperation it sinks in just how many times she nearly lost this woman in the past three days, how they nearly lost each other, and instead of it choking her, though she feels its fingers clawing at her throat, a dam within her breaks and a curious sort of calm washes over her, not at all the terrifying deluge she had assumed it to be for so long. Still, she feels herself drowning, this woman filling her lungs.

And maybe it's the way Helena is looking at her as she's suddenly hyperaware of the tender hold of that pale hand, or maybe it's because she's too tired to think about anything else, or maybe it's because she waited a year to be able to do this, but for once, Myka finally lets herself say it, say everything; she leans in, and she presses her lips to Helena's.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so I hadn't planned on extending this, but, well. then episode 2 came and Helena was gone without blatant explanation and Myka was looking rather downtrodden and that little speech she gave to Pete about grief and anger causing someone to do something they would never do...it all rather smacked of Helena being taken for re-evaluation and Myka, faced once again with the prospect of potentially losing her, getting a taste of understanding what she must have felt that drove her to the events at Yellowstone.

In the end, Myka didn't have to fight for her; Helena went willingly. 

From the few assurances the Regent was willing to provide, she ascertained that her absence wasn't to be extended and that, somehow, Artie had something to do with this. For Myka's sake, she chose to focus on the former fact, and though the agent looked less than convinced (for some reason the turn of phrase "once bitten; twice shy" flits into her mind as she watches Myka struggle to judge whether the man is friend or foe this time, and though it is heartbreaking to see the taller woman's once infallible faith in the cause faltering _because_ of her, she can't help but feel a swell in her chest at the mere hint of the lengths the agent would go to _for_ her) she does, after all, bite back her protest.

Instead, she disregards the Regent entirely in favour of turning toward Helena, who suffers a visceral tug to her heart at the sight of the face opposite hers so plainly pained, defeated, and breathes, "I'll be here when you get back."

_Please. Come back to me._

It's this that Helena remembers as she numbly allows herself to be guided by her handlers, trailing after--Kosan, the man who took her body from her. So soon as she recalls his name while studying the back of his bald head, she also knows that she feels no bitterness, no resentment, no grudge of any sort against him, and the former agent idly muses that she is still trying to mould herself to be the person Myka sees in her. Has always seen in her. 

(Myka, Myka--and though Helena's now staring down at the tiled floor passing beneath her feet, she's seeing those tears again, and wondering why they spring so easily to those green eyes nowadays.

She wonders if it's because of her.

She wonders if Myka's been having the same dreams she has.)

They end up in a room not unlike the one they met in before, what feels like a lifetime ago. She supposes that, technically, it really _was._

She shivers.

Kosan, perhaps as a gesture of starting fresh, pulls out the chair for her and she takes it with a spared flash of a smile. With a subtle nod toward the door, he sends the help from the room and then they are two, and Helena feels not unlike a child meeting with the headmaster, cowed and meek and hoping to seem apologetic enough to be let off with a warning. 

Because for the first time in over a hundred years, she has someone else to think about, and a future for the taking, the one Myka has given her, carved for her from her own life.

Folding his hands on the table before him and between them, the Regent observes her in silence a moment or two, and the Englishwoman may be uncustomarily subdued, but she keeps her gaze level with his, meeting the unspoken judgment with quiet dignity. 

Perhaps absurd at this point in time, it nonetheless strikes her that Adwin Kosan has kind eyes.

"It is an..." he paused, carefully selecting his words, "interesting predicament we find ourselves in, Miss Wells."

His voice is measured and soft, but even still it thunders compared to the preceding silence. 

"You have managed to both regain your body, and, in perhaps an even more unprecedented turn of events, Agent Nielsen's trust. We as Regents have been requested to 'go with his gut' on this one."

This does surprise Helena, and she allows it to register on her face. Though she realizes Artie's support will play a pivotal role in her sentencing and in her seeing the other woman again, she cannot bring herself to smile. Instead, the information simply settles at the back of her mind, uncomfortable and incongruous dead weight, another in a long list of things that simply feels...off.

"He has said that, in dire situations, he could see you going to great lengths to protect the Warehouse. Would you agree with this, Miss Wells?"

She thinks of Myka. It comes to her as though filtered through a dream, the memory of Yellowstone, and then of the wooded clearing not two days ago. Helena had resigned herself to death some time ago, but she knows that for Myka, she would carry through. "Yes." 

_Yes, Mr. Kosan. I would give my life for her._

"Then I am forced to wonder," he says slowly, relacing his fingers and leaning forward to rest his weight on his elbows, "what has brought about such a change. A year ago you were on the cusp of killing millions of people, having deceived our agents and used the Warehouse to benefit your own means to an end. And here today you sit before me, reformed. Why are you to be trusted now, what would prevent you from a, shall we say, relapse?"

_The same that has always stood in my way, I suppose._

"Agent Bering." Kosan studies her now, his dark eyes scrutinizing her face, but she does not shy from it. She sweeps a hand back through her hair as she continues in a low voice, "My time spent as merely a disembodied consciousness...rather forced me to come to terms with the repercussions for what I nearly did. Myka...she helped me to realize what I had thrown away in my grief and in my anger."

"Which was?"

"The Warehouse." No, that doesn't feel quite right, and something in the way the Regent's eyes bore into her tells her that he knows it, too. A small, humourless smile curls at her lips as her gaze drops. When had she become so transparent? 

She tries again. "Her."

There, engrained in her mind and all too easy to recollect, is Myka's face, beautiful though tearstained and rent with the agony of betrayal, of looking that betrayal in the eyes, of wrapping a gun in betrayal's hand and pressing it squarely between her own eyes. Then she's clinging tightly to her as they lift from the ground, pulled from danger; she's touching her shoulder, cupping her cheek, wiping away her tears with a tender thumb and dulling the Medusa's cruelty, dulling the aches and pains accrued over a century in bronze; she's looking up at her from the chess table, so much hope, so much trust, so much love in her face. She's telling her she believed in her and she was right.

Remaining contemplative for several beats, he then speaks the four words she has been dreading, has been looking forward to with a sense of impending release from a weight she has carried for so long. Quietly, so quietly, "You fell in love." And there is no scoff; he states it almost as though he had been expecting the revelation. Even so, she stiffens.

It feels wrong, admitting this here and now and to him, not Myka; she had wanted it to be the agent who first hears those words from her lips. 

"Yes. I love her." And then, because that doesn't feel quite good enough still-- _I'm going to need more than she doesn't like the world_ \--she declares fiercely, "She, all of them, have shown me there is so much good in this world. And more than anything, I wish to be the cause of it, not in spite of it."

Helena allows a small measure of hope to tentatively soften her voice, again lifting her eyes to meet Kosan's. "She has shown me there is so much good left in _me_."

Nearly two days have passed and it's late when they escort her back onto the premises, but Myka is there, like she promised, and Helena is there, like she hoped. They wrap around one another, the taller woman's crying and the Victorian is kissing away her tears, tasting their salt on her lips and thinking that this is bliss. Myka's breathing something into her hair, repeating it desperately over and over until her voice cracks and it takes Helena a moment or two to realize she's saying "I forgive you, I forgive you" and she never knew how much she needed to _hear_ it until now, until a hoarse "I love you" bubbles out of her and they're clinging so tightly as though they were trying to become one. 

When at last their reunion becomes less crushing and they hold each other gently, heedless of the time passed, heedless of all the scars shared between them, they are. 


End file.
